The gods offer no rewards for intellect. There was never one yet that showed any interest in it. --Mark Twain

July 04, 2010

The Battle for America?

I try not to be explicitly political, patriotic, or partisan. My skepticism extends beyond religion to politics and history, so it makes sense that I'm not choosing a side in the current false polarity called conservative and liberal. No two words currently in use have less specific epistemic content than those two, except maybe faith. I distrust politicians of every stripe, and I dislike the attempt to bend history to suit a particular ideology. Ironically, I'm writing this days before interviewing David Barton. Three things got me thinking about this so-called battle for America or culture war or ideological conflict. (I'm so weary of war metaphors.) First was Daniel Radosh's excellent book Rapture Ready! that I reviewed recently. The second was this excellent article in Foreign Policy magazine (and thank you again, JJ, for that subscription!) that looks at the way Ronald Reagan's record and legacy have been twisted and misinterpreted, and only occasionally accurately reported. The third was a facebook status update from a friend this morning. Charles has been on the blog before, and I suspect he will be again, and I'll certainly give him the heads up that I'm posting about him. We can't seem to agree on much of anything, but he's faultlessly courteous, which is a rare gift in theist camps these days. Here's his status:

Happy 4th to my atheist and secular friends. I saw your folks 'handling' Sharia Law up in Dearborn, MI, over the past few years. You wouldn't last a second outside of a nation built on a Judeo-Christian consensus, unless you become bloody tyrants yourselves. Plenty to be thankful for, even if you don't have Anyone to thank but yourselves.

Where to begin with this? I have no idea what sharia he's referring to, and sharia law is a redundancy. I googled a bit and found this. Yes, they act like douches, but I can produce plenty of examples from down here in the south of how rednecks and Christians behave in similar fashion. All that aside, though, as I think it's a red herring, the real issues are related to the statement "wouldn't last a second outside a nation built on Judeo-Christian consensus," and becoming "bloody tyrants" ourselves. The irony here is so thick, and Charles is usually a little more sensitive to irony, another rare feat in ideologues. Let's go one point at a time, shall we, and I'll get to the deep ironies in points 4 and 5.

Plenty of atheists and secularists living in nations not built on such a consensus. Much of Europe comes to mind. Since Jainists, Taoists, and many Buddhists are atheists, I think Asia is doing quite well too. Heard of Canada?

Judeo-Christian consensus? Was America founded with Jews in mind? Not sure. How were Jews treated initially? And what sort of consensus? Jefferson, Franklin, Madison? Were they Christians or Jews? Possibly deists? The foundational documents have literally nothing to say about any such consensus. It's manufactured history.

So if atheists and secularists are faring well in this country, it's because of the proud Judeo-Christian consensus/heritage? That must mean that all minority groups fared well in this enlightened Christian experiment. African slaves, women before suffrage, African Americans post-slavery, Chinese immigrants during westward expansion, and let's not forget the Native Americans. Glad our founders brought them a healthy dose of Christian freedom.

Am I to believe that Christians have never engaged in "bloody tyranny" themselves? Seriously? This is just silly. The history of Christendom is a who's who of bloody tyranny, from Constantine's edict converting the empire, to the Crusades, to Torquemada, to Calvin's cynical murder of Servetus, to Bloody Mary and the Catholic/Protestant bloodlettings in Britain, to Southern Baptist defense of slavery, to the slaughter of Native Americans, to the rise of the Ku Klux Klan and the implementation of Jim Crow, Christianity has produced more tyrants than any secular state I know. Of course, they've had nearly 2000 years of practice.

The richest irony is that the plight of all the minority groups in the United States has improved as America has become less Christian. The secularization of government has actually advanced the cause of women, African Americans, and other minorities. We're still waiting for the old folks in the religious fringe to die off so that the GLBT community can have equal rights and privileges. As with the Puritans who gave birth to their movement, fundamentalists and evangelicals always define freedom according to their own criteria, and disagreement always leads to castigation, legalism, exhile, and a redefinition of what they mean by freedom.

Well, Charles is right about one thing. I'm not thanking god today for freedom, but I'll happily say thanks to men and women who worked and fought and died for it, including my father who did his tour in Vietnam and retired from the U.S. Army, and while I'm at it, I'll thank myself for doing my stint as a Russian linguist in the USAF back when there was a Soviet Union to fear. I wonder how many of these flag-wavers have actually signed up to take the risks they so fetishize. Anyway, I guess that's my Independence Day meditation. I do love this country, but I'll happily criticize her faults and hope that her people live up to their better angels. And it wouldn't hurt if they told the truth about history every once in a while.

Comments

The richest irony is that the plight of all the minority groups in the United States has improved as America has become less Christian. The secularization of government has actually advanced the cause of women, African Americans, and other minorities.

This is a great point, Greg. Those who claim our heritage is purely Christian seem to forget just how poorly they dealt with those groups.

I really hope there's some context of good natured, borderline hostile banter that would allow some interpretation of that quote other than "Be grateful we let you live, you damn ingrates." Removed from context, it is graceless and classless.

"The richest irony is that the plight of all the minority groups in the United States has improved as America has become less Christian. The secularization of government has actually advanced the cause of women, African Americans, and other minorities."

I'm not sure how to reconcile that statement with the Civil Rights movement of the 1960's, which was led by an ordained Baptist minister and rallied on a regular basis from the pulpits of African-American churches.

Mike, it's easily reconciled. Black churches were certainly involved, but what percentage of American Christianity did they represent? There were white churches involved as well, mainly Mainstream, Liberal, and Quaker. That's at the point of activism though. Legislation, especially those crazy "activist judges," got the thing rolling in some landmark decisions and bills. At each critical point for minorities, women, and gays, it's been an entrenched church that has fought hardest to deny them rights, not secularists, humanists, atheists, etc. The fight was always a "moral" or "Biblical" one, and the last remaining argument against full GLBT rights is the biblical one. There is literally no other argument remaining, and Christians can't seem to reconcile themselves to the idea that citizenship brings rights, even where those rights conflict with your deep theological convictions. It's why secularism has been good for minorities and women, whereas Southern evangelical piety has been a disaster for minority rights.

Well, do I address each of those points or try to use more of a buckshot approach? LOL.

Europe and Canada are from a Christian consensus. History based on state sponsored churches or church sponsored states. We share a common bond in the religion department. We just decided that the state need not sponsor any church nor should any church sponsor the state. An idea that came from many, including devout Baptists, encouraging an environment safe for secularism and oxygen bars. Besides, not many indigenous Jainists in Germany or Manitoba.

Also, point out that the abolitionist movement and women's sufferage movement were not secular-based movements. They were heavily based on a Christian consensus. The Declaration of Independence refers to a natural law explained as a Creator who endowed us with certain unalienable rights, etc, etc, as the basis for our concept of self-government. Not really atheistic or secularist sounding at all. Probably would instigate a law suit or 12 if it were proposed by anyone associated in government these days.

Christianity does have a sad history. However, the idea conveyed in Scripture is that human beings are sinful. Seems to be a valid concept, across the board. In fact, I would go as far to say that the Crusades were an abuse of, rather than the ideal, the Gospel of Jesus Christ and the Killing Fields were a logical outworking of atheistic first principles of nothing but matter, energy, time. Christians can be cruel and atheists can be linguists, but people can and usually do act inconsistently to the principles they hold.

My main point is this. Secularism has been able to live and thrive on the host of a Judeo-Christian consensus. The very enemy of the ACLU has made the ACLU possible. When Sharia Law (usually referred to in this redundant manner) flexes its muscle, secular authority buckles. After all the big talk about a very steralized separation of church and state, as soon as a religion decides to use the threat of violence or even the possible threat of force, bravado turns to compliance without much thought. And in the case of places like Dearborn, secularism cowars when pressed. I am sure the City of Dearborn isn't anti-CHristian or pro-Muslim...they just don't want any trouble and will cave their deepest convictions to avoid it. That's what seems almost causal when you don't believe anything except the strange and unexplained devout right to not believe anything.

BTW, no offense, but wasn't expecting USAF Russian Linguist. More than I've done, in terms of military service, but wasn't exactly what I expected.

Charles, I'm not following your angle in Dearborn. What specifically are the events you're referring to? Is it the missionaries being arrested for trying to proselytize people at the Arab International festival, or is there more to the story?

Charles, let's not forget that the Shari'a is the law of God (at least according to those espousing to the Qur'an). In other words, it is as much the law of God to Arab Muslims as the Holy Bible is the law of God to Christians. Also, don't assume that the civil codes of the Arab Gulf States (such codes being derived from the laws of Egypt, France and other established European legal codes) are not in profound conflict to the Shari'a because they are--on a daily basis.

Charles,
Could you maybe define what constitutes a nation formed from a 'Christian consensus'? There's a way of understanding that statement which I think is true, another which I think is false. The sense with which I agree is that many of the founders were devout Christians and most used Christian symbols in their rhetoric. That those two modest statements are true seems utterly clear. However, the claim is false when it is parsed as meaning that the principles used to establish our system of government and the rights of our citizenry were derived or inspired by the Judeo-Christian scriptures. The great minds behind the Declaration of Independence were Jefferson, Franklin, and Adams. Of the three, only Adams would qualify as a Christian by any evangelical standard I've encountered, and even he would have been left out by the more fundamentalist conditions. The principles cited in the document itself are taken largely (and often verbatim) from the works of John Locke, and the Creator cited in the text was not the God of Genesis, but the clockwinder deity of the deists Jefferson and Franklin. If you want evidence that Christian principles were expressly excluded from the framing of the Constitution, look at the issue of slavery. The most devout Christians in the Continental Congress opposed legalizing slavery, but they recognized that without Virginia there would be no nation. The values given priority in that equation are clearly the areligious principles of political expediency.

The two senses of 'Christian consensus' are often conflated by Christian historians (e.g. Barton) in that they give evidence for the former and, having thus established it, claim that it has the significance of the latter. It's clever rhetoric but clearly equivocal. I don't mean, by the way, to say that's what you are doing here, just trying to clarify what you mean by the terms you use since they carry so much semantic baggage.

Cheek, I think there's another level in which it's untrue: The founders weren't fundamentalists. They would not have understood Southern Baptists. When today's fundagelicals claim America as a Christian nation, they mean that in their (the Barna) understanding of the word "Christian". That wouldn't have been the understanding of the Christian founders.

There is a lot of silliness to this whole argument that America is a Christian nation. One of the bigger ones to me is the disconnect between Enlightenment thinking and Christianity. The Enlightenment was a belief in rationality and science, something which fundagelicals eschew.